The U.S. medical establishment has long rejected the idea of a connection between vaccines and autism. That position recently was bolstered by a three-part investigative series by the British journal BMJ that found that a 1998 study that spurred belief in the link was a deliberate hoax.

However, what’s often lost amid the controversy is that vaccines do, in rare instances, cause grave injuries, including brain damage with symptoms suffered by autistic kids.

One such example is that of Elias Tembenis, as CBS News reports. Born in August, 2000, Elias was developing normally until he was four months old and received a second dose of the DTaP vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

A day later, he was brought to the hospital after he came down with a fever and suffered a seizure lasting more than 15 minutes. From then on, according to medical records, Elias was tormented by a series of maladies: ear infections, epilepsy and pervasive development disorder, which is often associated with autism.

A few months after his seventh birthday, Elias’s parents rushed him to the hospital with a fever and a cough. He suffered a seizure and subsequently lapsed into cardiac arrest, which killed him.

After considering filing a case alleging that Elias’s vaccines were responsible for his symptoms of autism, his parents instead focused on his seizures and epilepsy when they sought an award in federal vaccine court, arguing that they were the direct result of the DTaP shot he received in 2000. Vaccine court cases charging that vaccines caused autism have been dismissed, but cases like Elias’s, in which claimants focus on other aspects of injuries that may include symptoms of autism, are often successful.

Elias’s parents won their case late last year. The award was not disclosed, but the case now joins what CBS says are nearly 1,300 examples of brain injuries linked to vaccines and compensated in court over the past 20 years, a pool of cases that some experts say should be subjected to further study.

It is quite appalling that a child should die from a vaccination but it may also be true that as no medical procedure can be immune from risk this will happen. What is almost as appalling is that this can happen and that the award of the court will be hidden from view. As well as the shocking news that there have been 1,300 similar cases. Ordinary people are being treated like ‘gun fodder’ by the industrial/medical complex that makes so many millions of $s from vaccines. We need to start overturning this vaccine cartel.
But just one thought. Doctors surely know much more about autism than they make out. If it is true that autism is only found in vaccinated people is this something that doctors can say they have not observed or failed to notice? Is this a reasonable position? I do not think so. Medical indemnity insurers should be thinking about the potential damages that might arise if parents question whether doctors really knew or not.

Thanks for the attention to this boys life and death. A child who dies from a vaccine is no less significant than one who dies from a disease. In all of the media blitz on Dr. Wakefield there are millions of children who get overlooked.

We discovered how to save babies from PKU and other metabolic disorders, there are probably ways we can find out if a child is ready for a vaccine or if it should be delayed. Are we doing everything we can to make sure no child dies or suffers because of a vaccine? I have not been convinced.

Thank you FairWarning and Mr. Corcoran for reporting the story of a little boy’s suffering that may not ever have needed to be told. Suffering that has gone on for far too long due to a lack of interest by the medical community to address an uncomfortable truth that they are priviledged to ignore. Doctors allow themselves this indulgence, their denial cloaked in training that teaches that any illness having a close temporal association to vaccination, first and foremost, is merely coincidence. It defies logic and the scientific method. Deceit or ignorance–no wonder doctors have lost the trust of the parents. An immune reaction is an inflammtory reaction and an inflammatory reaction is …a fever. Vaccination is designed to artificially ramp up this reaction–and ramp it up for an extended period of time. It should come as no surprise that febrile seizures will occur. And just as in a natural disease reaction where an out of control inflammatory reaction can cause permanent damage, vaccination is no different. In Elias’ case, his parents had to fight for justice, for the acknowledgment that Elias suffered as a result of what can only be described as an improperly studied vaccine program that is today both negligent and reckless. It is morally imperative that the public health community study vaccine adverse reactions so that more innocent children like Elias won’t have to suffer. Thank you for allowing Elias’ suffering to come out of the shadows. His suffering deserves the same measure of attention and compassion that is offered a child who suffers an infectious disease.

My child immediately developed encephalitis after a series of vaccines when he was 12 months old. Encephalitis in my son’s case presented with a fever and screaming.

Of course his being only a year old made it impossible for him to communicate all the other possible suffering he was experiencing. As his brain swelled and became seriously injured, he lost a great deal of the developmental progress he had experienced prior. For instance it took more than a year to say the words “I love you” once again.

My son survived, others are much less fortunate.

Doctors will tell you that after vaccines a child may develop a fever and become irritable and that there is nothing to worry about. My experience is that that is not true, you should worry.

When my daughter developed frightening grand mal seizures, the doctors told me, “she has autism…” and that was that. The lack of concern for what they were doing to her brain, her health was ice cold and devastated my husband and me. We were lucky – even the longer ones did not kill her. I pray that the Tembenis’s can find peace in their fight for the safety of other kids, whose parents are unaware that the dangers of vaccine reactions are VERY REAL despite the monstrous media push to convince them otherwise. ONE CHILD matters – whether it’s a death from flu or a vaccine injury. There is NO splitting hairs when a child has died. SAFETY FIRST – NOT SALES.

Without saying why, federal traffic safety officials have quietly altered crash data, revealing that more than three times as many people die in wrecks linked to tire failures than previously acknowledged.

A conviction for domestic violence in the U.S. strips a person of the legal right to possess a gun. It doesn't matter if the conviction is a misdemeanor or a felony. The rationale for the federal law: Domestic violence is a red flag for future violence — including potentially deadly violence with a firearm.

Despite mounting casualties from crashes of recreational off-highway vehicles, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has shot down a proposal to track injuries and deaths involving the popular trail machines.